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It feels like enough after a fortnight with little opportunity for adequate sleep, and zero opportunity for kickin’ around with comics and a cat. Can I get a do-over on adulthood? I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong.

Really, the only part I’m faking is the appearance of maintaining sanity during this time of one step forward, two steps back that we seem to be treading water in. Somehow, I think even that is an illusion, and really there is some forward movement if I watch the replay in slow motion.

But, I don’t have time to watch the replay today, so…

Oh! There was this thing that happened:

A lovely group of students for some 80s-inspired spinning was the highlight of the blur that may have been March 2014. Denver next month will be awesome, and the EARLY BIRD special ends tomorrow!!!

Oh! And I have re-opened my Big Cartel shop! Etsy is still there, but I’m going to be putting more and more on the new and less and less on the old. Etsy will eventually be exclusively for de-stash and OOAK items, and the BC for repeatable colorways and fiber clubs. I haven’t updated the sidebar yet (one thing at a time, but if you click on the banner here, it’ll take you to my new-ish home on BC:

Stay tuned for a Hey-I’m-Traveling-Soon-And-Need-Lunch-Money sale! There has been some spinning thrown into the daily life-chaos. Where there’s a will, and all that.

…spent a weekend morning getting the taps in, and enjoyed your first cup of sap for the season.

…said the words “I hate you” in a fit of tantrum rage. I guess we made it nearly nine years without that phrase, and even though I knew you were just trying to get me to change my mind about something and you didn’t really mean it, and you sobbed and looked pretty miserably sorry about having said it, man…it just sucked. It didn’t happen again any of the other times you didn’t want to go to school this week, so maybe a lesson was learned about saying things we don’t mean. It’s ouch, yeah buddy?

…in contrast, lost at Catan and didn’t get upset or want to play again immediately. All smiles and hey, maybe next time. That was nice.

…received a pretty stellar trimester report from your teacher. We’re proud of you, but more importantly, we hope you’re proud of yourself. I thought I caught a wee self-satisfied grin when you overheard me reading it out loud to Papa.

My working life is a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of teeny gigs that nearly almost make a supplemental income when I get a few of them snapped together. I have little desire for more screen time at the end of a day that largely revolves around hours of it. Even so, I’m not too far behind on a personal project, and that is something. Actually, I’m lying about that. I fished the psycho picture off my phone from a weekend hike and the knitting pic is for this week’s post on the Sparkle Stories blog (I’m there every Thursday). Chronologically, they’re spot-on, but they weren’t intended for the 52 project. I suppose that doesn’t make much of a difference to anyone else.

*Oh, and I feel like I should mention the fact that my son doesn’t run around threatening people with knives. This was a ham-up for the camera. He was chipping ice on the brook with it, which is a totally inappropriate use for, say, his good carving knife, but not for the chintzy 99-cent hardware store almost-not-even-a-knife that he was carrying at the time. I greatly enjoy the contrasting moods of the two images.

O, this week you…

…acquired two new friends for the fish tank, which had been empty for months after a stretch of Aquatic Pet Disappointment (APD). Cheeky and Other Fish enjoy staring out from the same corner all day long, but otherwise are quite lovely and entertaining and, so far, alive.

…allowed me to teach you how to arm knit while I simultaneously taught myself, and we couldn’t stop laughing. Thanks for always being patient and willing to subject yourself to numerous photographs and “Hey, could you do that again?” for my Craft Correspondent job.

…have been ridiculously high energy crazy whoa every night and so I’m contemplating black curtains to simulate 5pm darkness until next fall.

…asked me to go out for a hike with you, when it’s almost always the other way around. It would have been so fantastic if I wasn’t sick with a head cold, but I went anyway so as not to discourage you from asking again.

Winter Break: It was quiet, and full even though we didn’t go anywhere vacation-ish. Work and play happened, like any other week, but it was a little richer with friends and warm drinks. A nod to the joys of Winter, yes, but feeling in the end like a readiness to say goodbye. We’re still in it; just a thing we have to admit to ourselves. The position of the sun makes 12 degrees feel somehow more tolerable than even just a few weeks ago, and brightly glittering snow is so much more hopeful than dull, grey snow under an overcast sky, so I think we’ll manage.

I’m deep in scheming and dreaming up a trip out West in April to visit family and teach some workshops. Places I’ll hit this go ’round: Portland, OR, the SF Bay Area, and Denver, CO. I’ve got the latter location covered for a venue, but am still contemplating the other two. A new spinning workshop, and the tried-and-true nuno felt class are on the table. More information will be available soon, but if you have any requests, ideas, venues to suggest or offer, do let me know! All is still in the planning stage.

In other news: granola. I’ve posted about what I like to call Culture Crunch before, and I totally forgot about how I used to sprout sesame seeds to add to the mixture. Next time! This time, I went back to the original recipe that inspired my fermented granola experimentation and played with some of the post-fermentation wet ingredients. To the honey mixture, which I increased a tad, I added a generous scoop of peanut butter, probably about 3/4 cup for a doubled recipe, and a few heaping tablespoons of raw cacao powder. As soon as it comes out of the dehydrator, I’ll add soaked and dried sunflower and pumpkin seeds, toasted coconut, and raisins. A little taste-testing reveals that this is a subtle flavoring, not too sweet, which means it will be perfection once the raisins are added. I wasn’t going for cloying, just comforting. Win!

…enjoyed Snow Days aplenty, which included starting Winter Break from school a couple days early. We’re big into not complaining about large measurements of snowfall. We played in it, consumed it, hiked around in it, and rested in it. February wins.

…started reading The Boxcar Children series on your own and motored right on through the first book. Your eyes grew huge when you just had to tell me about the best part: a “super yummy dinner.”

A pair of weeks, gone in a flash. Sickies and ickies, an entire day listening to and reading books, Snow Days, growing skills, birthday planning, Halloween planning (what? an onion?), multiplication, sitting too close to the wood stove, and gallons of honey-lemon “tea” find us in mid-February. Huh.

I’m playing catch-up after an experiment in discipline. I am now in the habit of early morning yoga instead of early morning writing, so the next step is getting up even earlier to fit in both activities. I’d like to be here at my desk more, but it’s been some other kind of wonderful to spend time in my body, even at the expense of letting other soul needs slip for a while. Here’s to a happy marriage of the two…

…and some snowshoeing before today’s early release from school. I welcome a thicker blanket.

Suddenly, you are aware of making an impression. Perhaps, it is because you understand that I don’t just keep images for you and for myself. I share them. Or, I could be reading too much into it, and you are simply maturing more quickly than I can keep up. You would rather share your truth than a silly tongue-out face to cover it up. It’s hard to get a candid shot of you, anymore. I have hardly any time to line up my trigger finger, and you will turn, beaming in my direction.

How you’ve put up with me this week (and last), I do not know. I did everything I could to fend it off this year, but the winter melancholy was overpowering. Your smile and your laughter have gone a long way to prevent me from going completely under.

It’s almost embarrassing to be so predictable. Mid-to-late January gets me every year. It tells me I’m aiming to jump too high, that I’m investing too many of my hopes and dreams into a shiny new year, and that I’m just setting myself up for a crushing disappointment. I don’t know why I fall for it. I don’t have to listen.

Tomorrow, though,…tomorrow January’s voice will stop. The gentle encouragement of February will release me. We’ll really plan the garden, the sap will start to flow, the days will continue to grow longer, and I will still have my hopes and dreams. I may forget them when I feel smothered under January’s dark cloak, but I’ll still be clutching the whole lot of them when I come around and find myself in the light.